CD Projekt tackles The Witcher 3 downgrade issue head on

"If the consoles are not involved there is no Witcher 3 as it is," answers Marcin Iwinski, definitively. "We can lay it out that simply. We just cannot afford it, because consoles allow us to go higher in terms of the possible or achievable sales; have a higher budget for the game, and invest it all into developing this huge, gigantic world.

"Developing only for the PC: yes, probably we could get more [in terms of graphics] as there would be nothing else - they would be so focused, like if we would develop only on Xbox One or PlayStation 4. But then we cannot afford such a game."

Well i wouldn't say its hardly noticeable compared to the earlier trailers and they did say high end PC's could replicate those early visuals, i still think it looks great (obviously) and i kinda laugh when people say they cancelled their pre-orders over it.

Game is beautiful indeed but does not give you a excuse to show touched up demo's LATE in it's development cycle.

If this game was not a near master piece everyone one would be ripping on it for the downgrade like they did on watch dogs and Alien Colonial Marines. But if the game is good a lot of people turn a blind eye to showing deceptive footage.

If CDPR would of been open about it months before the launch of the game HARDLY ANYONE would of complained at launch....but instead they don't show the true footage of this game until last minute. Don't care how you feel about this game or how good it is, does not take a genius to figure out that was not a good thing to do.

Ugh the graphics are perfect and the art style is great. Whats the big problem here? Can't wait to see you all complain when SW Battlefront graphics look nothing like the teaser 'game play' we saw last month. Quit counting pixels and enjoy the game you buncha nerds...

"hey developers and publishers...you can get away with showing false footage of your game and you won't get sued for it! We will just call it "pre alpha" footage even though we know the final version won't look like this! "

Maybe if publisher's that downgraded their games in the past like Ubisoft with Watch dogs got in trouble for doing it we may have never had the witcher 3 downgraded. But nah lets put up with it so the next master piece gets a downgrade too.

Yea EA and DICE will downgrade battlefront 3 because they knew gamers like you seem to put up with it...it lowers are standard...vote with your wallet I guess is the only solution to avoiding a battlefront 3 downgrade.

And btw I sympathize with CDPR and understand that what they had to do with the game.....but honestly no one would of been pissed if they would of learned something called HONESTY and showed the non-touched up footage of their game shown near the end of its development cycle instead of letting people know last minute.

It was a target render. That's what they wanted to achieve. They couldn't and admitted that. They said they were trying as hard as possible to get that level but with the consoles and pc in mind they couldn't using their small team so they had to make compromises. That's not lying. That is being honest. It's people like you that just look at screen shots and not read into the development cycle that are a problem. They said before it came out there would be compromises.

I'm not putting up with anything, but I understand the difference between pre-alpha builds and final releases. Look, whether you want to accept it or not CDPR made a wise decision to scale back graphics a bit so that they could deliver a stable product on multiple platforms. They are not a big gun studio. They have finite resources. What they were able to achieve is remarkable.

The game looks fantastic and plays great. Even with its minor issues, its much more solid than any other release as of late. So if CDPR left the graphics they way they were and as a result the game could only get a max 20fps on PC using a Titan X, would you still be complaining? most likely yes.

Curious as to who you plan on suing for down graded graphics as test footage always says 'not final build'. How exactly is a studio going to be punished? Are you suggesting the formation of some sort of Graphics Police to keep devs in line :D ?

Yeah games look great at home, comparing them to a youtube video doesn't do them justice. Youtube has it's limitations. When you play at home it's pumping out raw video to your screen as intended, nothing compressed. Im sure The Witcher 3 look great on the big screen.

All of you defending CDPR are probably the same people who were ripping Ubisoft for Watchdogs. So when CDPR does it, they get a pass huh??

Yes, I'd rather see a game only a couple of months/days before it releases rather than seeing it months/years before the game releases only to find out on release day that it's been downgraded. That's just my opinion and No company should get a pass no matter how big or small the downgrade is.

Im pretty sure they are being about as honest as they could be. Sure we would all love to not see anythign about a game until right before launch. But it doesn't work that way, won't work that way, and can't work that way. You can't expect a company to put $20+ million into to a game and release it with no build up, or promotion. That's a failure waiting to happen. The promotion for this game is what got them 1.5 million presales for this game. That right there can pretty much guarantee the game to be a success, depending on game and company. This isn't the mid 90's were major publishers are putting games together with a small team and in less then a year.

I don't understand why it took you till release day to find out it was downgraded. This has been being brought up for months. But if that is going to ruin a game for anyone, than stop watching trailers of games when you know they are years away.

I don't even own the game yet, but from what i have played i dont get all the complaints. Someone please show me a AAA $30million game with one of the largest open worlds we have seen a game, that was able to nail down every bit of what was shown in a trailer 2+ years before hand. There's a reason why it's a vertical slice. Because thats all of the game they have done so far. Multiply that by 50x and see if it its easy to nail that down on your final cut

I don't know why some people are making a big deal about this all of a sudden. It has always been common knowledge in the gaming community that games in development are only works in progress and some things can change. I thought we all knew to take early trailers with a grain of salt and that they are only vertical slices or targets that the developers are aiming for.

I prefer it this way. We're all big boys and girls and we're smart enough to know what early trailers really represent. I would rather see 'something' about what my favorite developers are working on and simply keep in mind that it's subject to change than to not see anything about my most anticipated games until right before they release.

And as k3rn3ll points out, it's not really economically feasible to show nothing of your game until right before release. A few massively successful and firmly established franchises might get away with it, but it would be suicide for many games.

Most games, like the Witcher 3, end up looking close enough to their early trailers anyway. It doesn't bother me in the slightest. Especially since we nearly always get other trailers later in development that show how the game is coming along.

There are two ways to do it: Develop for PC than port to consoles. Or Develop for all Platforms if they are the same underlying hardware. Porting is more complex when the hardware is different. In the case of W2, the X360 and PS3 were different to PC. In the case of W3, the PC, X1 and PS4 are all PCs. It would much cheaper and more profitable to start with the weakest device and have all resources work on the same code. In one of the ini/configs in the folder structure, there is a pointer to a folder that has specific presets for each platform. These platforms are so close that PS4 games can be probably started on a PC without any middle-ware and with just minor gpu config changes and this may happen for X1 and PS4 if they are cracked. I have seen folder structures for X360s and PS3s in the last generation. 360 for example has an .xex file that is similar to an exe file. PS4 and X1 folder structure will have a .exe file just like a PC. [(x86,x84) executables.] and for the first time, games on these consoles will work on a PC without an emulator.

The game is still brilliant and I am loving it. 8 hours into it and I am now at work craving for it. However, I still feel bad I did not get the VGX trailer version that said in game footage. But I will learn to just ignore that and enjoy this masterpiece.

So finally they own up. I actually understand why they had to downgrade the graphics. What we saw in the VGX/Sword of Destiny trailer could not be done by the vast majority of high end PCs.

However, I am very disappointed that cdprojekt kept denying this from the beginning of when the controversy started (Elder Blood trailer).

I'm sure they thought that owning up to downgrade would have killed off a percentage of their potential sales, so they had to either deny or not talk about the issue.

Now that the game is out, the truth is coming out. I just want to see the faces of the loyalist sheep who fought keyboard wars denying the downgrade ever existed. It doesn't take a microscope to tell the game's graphical fidelity took a leap down.

The game still looks absolutely amazing. And I have no doubt the gameplay will be masterful. But the big problem nowadays are companies lying to customers by showing an amazing demo/trailer then releasing a final game that looks way worse. Watch_Dogs was a big culprit. Many people based their preorders on that awesome 2012 demo. That is downright tricking customers.

As a PC gamer I'm fine with this. The larger budget more than makes up for slightly weaker graphics. If its a great game the pc community will handle visual upgrades far better than what the developers have time or interest in. As long as they give the pc basic features we expect like quicksave, keymapping, ex... then its fine uniform other features.

it wasnt downgraded the game was in alpha then and was much smaller I seen gameplay and truthfully it doenst look that much worse still looks pretty good looking, why pc elitists so self entilted and think they know whats better then the developer why should the developer have to make it exclusive to pcs with a ridiculous price with multiple gpus and such, stop taking video games so seriously and get a hobby you wierdos

Who even cares that they downgraded the game. Its understandable. And game is still one of the finest games this gen. But the things that is annoying is the fact that they kept lying about it and now are trying to justify doing so

Just before launch-"game has not been downgraded" After launch-"it was necessary"

It is good to hear they are going to make more tuning possible. Hopefully they will enable all features that were still in present in 2014.

PC has graphics settings so gamers are able to choose the one for their gaming rig. If one chooses to buy a weaker rig for gaming he has to use lower settings - that's how PC gaming has been working decades already.

Even if only 1% can use the highest graphical settings _today_ next year the situation is different already. GPUs technologies go forward very fast and I hope the companies would make their games flexible what comes to graphics.

A very professional, open minded, and respectable response to the criticisms. You guys didn't even have to meet with this critic to address this issue, but the fact that you did makes me respect you so much. To top it off you guys apologize and say you'll make it better. Gotta give you guys props. Granted, I still feel gamers have a right to be a little surprised/upset with the graphics, because in those older trailers it said word for word "IN GAME" gameplay, which I think CD PROJEKT should have just left out. However, the fact that you guys made an amazing game, and your respect to gamers and not insulting their intelligence, makes you guys earn my money. Other publishers take note!

CD PR next time dont be afraid to show what the game really looks like at launch. I think thats the biggest gripe here. That CD PR has the nerve to be so arrogant abour their engine then blame it on sales for the way it looks now.

When I go out to eat the food I order never looks like the pictures in the menu but it's a close proximity so I don't care or mind...I kinda look at games the same way. I just don't get the outrage some express over this stuff.

Despite the downgrade I can clearly see that CD PR put their heart and soul in making the wither 3. Applaud them for making W3 the most beautiful current gen game.

Personally, I don't think they lie to anyone because I believe they were extremely passionate about giving us something great but couldn't deliver their vision due to the hardware limitation. Believe or not, it hard to match your vision you have in mind because a huge portion of the work is based on a trail and error. Though, I do agree with most of you that CD PR shouldn't told us there would some noticeable downgrade in the final product of the wither 3.

However, I do believe the reason for their mistake was due to being overly passionate which is practically normal behavior from an artist point of view.

I should know because I'm an artist myself and at time I get overly passionate about my creation and would throw in everything cool ideas, rendering effects, color. And then, suddenly I catch myself and realize that I'm putting to much detail. In the world of art & drafting on paper you can throw all the detail you want. But in the world of game development, you have to tone thing down because the system won't let you put everything and anything you want in your game; because it will tax the hardware.

One thing to keep in mind, its in a man nature to be obsessed with power so we end up over doing it with just about anything and everything we get our hand on. So, in this case, CD PR didn't really lie to us.

If the PC trolls wouldn't be so damn obsessed with bits and bytes, quit whining and just play the game as-is, they'd discover that The Witcher 3 is a great game to enjoy despite any perceived downgrade. I know you PC elitists like to think of yourselves as being part of some small exclusive club, but the reality is developers cannot support such a small club and be profitable.

For the most part I just think it's the foilage detail that's lacking. It all looks amazing in motion but once you zoom in on the grass and stuff you'll realize it's actually lower resolution than in Witcher 2. I don't see why CDPR can't just make a high-level foilage setting for PC users.

so let me get this right step by step.... Step 1. make an unrealistic demo of a game that you could never afford to make.(aliens watchdogs etc) Step 2. Do NOT show off said game until everyone has pre-ordered and it's about to launch. Step 3. When the game launches and people talk about it not being what you showed, just release a statement saying: hey, there's no way we could make you that game. Step 4. Profit Step 5. Some how turn this into a PC vs Console idiot off and said game company gets away with it yet again. Step 6. Talk about how you can't wait for this to happen again (Bro I just can't wait till Division is gonna to be awesome!!!)

Lol so many people trying to justify the downgrade the Witcher 3 had is just sad,

CDPR deliver a great and awesome game period, but at the same time they won't lose the bunch of liars tag, cause when they show for the first time the witcher III they put on everyones mind that the game will look like that, lots of people were amazed on how the game looks and that what they hope for, but then again the final result wasn't the same.

I get the part they will earn more money with consoles, but why the PC version had to suffer ?, why don't release the game looking like this just for consoles(looking awesome btw) and release it for the PC looking like the initial trailers ?, I mean by doing this everyone will be happy, console fans and PC fans, I just don't get that stupid parity crap, just release it using each platform power, still the game will sell great, I think it could sell even more by doing this.

Don't know why people are complaining about Witcher 3's so called downgrade? This game looks like a masterpiece from low to ultra settings. I am playing this on my Origin Laptop and I can play Ultra settings between 35-40FPS(yeah its not 60 or above but it works for me). The hairworks feature will give PCs a hit, like Tomb Raider did back in 2013, but that extra detail on the animals and Geralt's hair looks great. This is the best looking open world game since Infamous Second Son! Yes it is a bold claim,but the environments looks so real and alive with the wind blowing trees, and the waves in the wide open sea while on a boat is a site to see!

The problem is not that PC versions should have better graphics. The problem here is that when you demo a product, the final version should at least match the demo in terms of quality, if not exceed it. If they had to downgrade cause of performance, they shouldn't have shown that level of quality in the first place. On a different note, if they had the PC version running with those graphics, not many people would have been able to get it looking like that, and you would see many people struggling to run the game just for the graphics. By downgrading, they made sure that most people get to enjoy the actual gameplay at 30 fps or more without having to worry about the graphics. And for the current level of graphics, the game is highly optimized on PC(except for NVIDIA hairworks. That thing is a leech). They went the Half Life 2 way of optimization instead of uber textures, and i appreciate them for that